renewal.

The Christmas season is truly magical.  This Christmas was different than year's past and with it, emotions were running high.  The small moments that often bring joy and that warm, fuzzy feeling on the inside, were the same moments that this year brought tears.  A few times, a flood of tears.  Moments where I could only hold one of my kids as their tears left my shirt damp and I whispered and prayed in their ear.  But also, there is joy and beauty to be found in those same moments.  I am learning more and more that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  He is with us in the mountaintops, in the valleys, and in the in-between.  He is always good.  Do I interpret God through my life circumstances, or my life circumstances through my God?  It's not the circumstance, it's the interpretation.  "I thought the fire came to kill me, but it turns out God was using the fire to refine me and bring me forth as gold."  Even in the the darkest of days, God is still good.  His purpose is unchanging.  His promise still true.  I listened to this podcast today that had me in tears.

"Reach back to the promise.  If He said it and spoke it over your life, there is nothing that can wage war against His Word.  You might be limping, but you’re still here.  You’re still chosen.  You’re still called.  No weapon formed against you shall prosper.  

When Peter denied Jesus He was in between.  In between the disciple that followed Jesus and the disciple that would be the rock in which Jesus built His church. God is planning to take what was and accelerate it to what He said it would be.  There is deliverance connected to you.  You’re still a rock that this earth is gonna have to reckon with.  All of this happened when Peter was in His most broken state.  He felt the least connected to Jesus.  The deeper you’ve been broken, the greater that foundation is gonna be.  

There are great heights connected to your name.  Where I am has nothing to do with who I am.  I have to get a mindset that everything must go. When I become desperate of more of Him and less of me, that’s when I become the vessel that He can use.  We have to let go of what has been imposed upon us.. what our emotions and our experience would have us believe, and offer ourselves a living sacrifice.  He makes all things new.  Peter became new in that moment when He was reminded of what Jesus said about Him.  No matter how disconnected you may feel from that Word that He promised you.. you’re gonna make it. Your heart is going to be healed." 

There's so much beauty in that.  As much as I believe it, honestly, I have been in a daze for a couple of days now.  For a month I've been listening to Christmas music in my car, sobbing, just wanting it to be over and done with.  It felt like too much. How to celebrate?  What to do with and for the kids to make it special, and new?  Making decisions that I knew might not be popular, but what was best for us.  There's no easy answer, but I can only follow the still small voice in my heart.  And this leads me to my word for the upcoming year.  I've been praying and praying for weeks, asking God to give me a word.  Also, kinda scared.  Last year God gave me "heart abandoned" and well, I had no clue what was coming.  My desire was to follow him with abandon, leaving behind all my plans and my security.  Just thinking about it actually makes me smile.  God always knows, even when we do not.

I would love to note a few things I have learned this year.  When everything changed on May 15th, I remember curling up in a ball and saying out loud, "I cannot do this.  I don't want to do this."  Honestly, I wanted to run away.  To move.  To hide.  And yet, here I am.  God picked me up and has walked with me.  He went before me.  In so may ways, He prepared me for this.  He has been gracious, and oh so good.  I will proclaim that forever - that even at the lowest point, His faithfulness, His peace, His goodness - were overpowering.  Also, the only way I could keep moving was to look to Him and not all the other voices.  "Obviously, I’m not trying to win the approval of people, but of God.  If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant."  It's easy to have an opinion on something that you have not walked through or that you do not have all of the details on.  There is no handbook for the situations that life brings you.  I now know how I want to be when someone is going through a difficult time.  Also, how I do not want to be.  This makes me want to be gracious with people, because we never know the full story.  I desire to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.  Ultimately, I pray God takes all of this and uses it for His good.  I know He is, and He will.  

As I was praying, the word God gave me was renew {to restore}.  And of course the message I randomly listened to afterwards was on renewal.  It means, to make like new; to restore, to begin again.  Pressing forward into 2020, I believe this word to be true.  With all my heart.  And I believe that, because I believe the promises of His Word.  I believe and have stood on the promise that "He works all things for the good of those who love Him and have been called according to His purpose."  Obviously, I will not understand the fullness of what this means until I am looking back on it.  But, I believe a new season is coming.  "I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead..."  I believer greater things are yet to come.  I am thankful that His love is never-ending and that His mercies are new everyday.  I can see the promise...

"those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength."

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day."

"He restores my soul."